Tuesday, December 18, 2007

I've joined Facebook for awhile but never took it seriously until last week. It was impressive to see how that simple social networking site has evolved into a democratic application portal that in the end has given a lot of choice for its community members.

One of the application that I got to try is Warbook. I am not a gaming fanatic of sort but this one really got me hooked. As the game becomes more popular, new players may have a tough time scaling up. So here's a simple guide that I give to fellow new players:

You can also invite 20 friends in your Facebook account everyday and earn 25,000 gold for each of them. If one eventually joins, through your invitation, you'll get 150,000 gold too.

As you level up, either through attacking or be attacked, you can decide to use the experience points to increase powers in attack, defense, spells, and mana. You can do this in Your Hero's page.

Expand your kingdom

Create Mines to increase your income. (priority)Note that your kingdom earns on an hourly basis that you can use to expand it further and build infrastructure. Make sure that your kingdom generates more income than its hourly upkeep or cost.

Build Amplifiers and Barriers(priority) to strengthen and protect yourself from magical attacks.

Use your Mana to cast spells such as alchemy (create gold) and boundary shift (enlarge your kingdom). This gets partially replenished every hour so make sure to use it whenever possible.

Update (10/17/2007): I had to admit that as you level higher, improving your kingdom takes a setback as it can be frustrating whenever you get attacked after major work in this area. I ended up focusing more on my army build-up. However, due to an increase earthquake and fireball attacks, I now focus as well on increasing my barriers.

Build your army

It is best to protect your kingdom by having at least 2 to 12 personnel per acre of land you have. (Thanks Toby for additional tip there!) Whether you are attacking or the one on the defensive, it is best to convert your soldiers to their strongest form as possible such as knights (offense), pikemen (defense), elites (strong on both offense and defense). Depending on your hero type, the elites are also referred to as defender (2 attack and 8 defense score), elite (5 attack and 5 defense score), berserker (8 attack and 2 defense score), legionnaire (3 attack and 5 defense score), wizard (5 attack and 3 defense score), assasins (6 attack and 2 defense score), zombies (3 attack and 3 defense score), machina (5 attack and 5 defense score).

Update (10/17/2007): As I leveled higher, I stopped upgrading my soldiers to elite. When computing amount paid to get an elite, it appears to be more cheaper and practical to invest instead on knights and pikemen.

Whether you win or lose during attacks, spend your gold immediately to replenish your army. When your attackers can't extract any gold from you, it deters their motivation to attack.

Attack / conquer enemy lands or repel attackersUpon sign-up in Warbook, you go through a 2-hour period of protection. Make sure to use this time to set-up your infrastructure and army utilizing your hourly kingdom's income.

You can level up by either attacking (offense) or be able to repel attacks (defense). Winning or losing can be influenced by:

The number of forts, training ground, amplifiers, barriers.

The strength of your army (number of personnel, attack or defense score per personnel, hero's attack or defense rating, % of training ground or defense ports)

When attacking or counter-attacking, note that:

You can size up your enemy or target by casting a spell using your mana in their hero's page. This can be used to anonymously spy (show hero's gold and army resources) and/or survey (shows infrastructure of the kingdom) them.

You can attack or counter-attack a hero as much as you can (and vice-versa). However, Warbook does not let a hero to be brought completely down and bar further attacks once it reaches the limit a hero's kingdom can take.

Update (10/17/2007): Attacking a hero more than 2x may be considered a multi-attack, especially if they are part of an alliance.

Update (10/17/2007): On the other hand, if you are being multi-attack, you can consider joining an alliance. If you have lots of friends in Warbook, forming an alliance can be a good option too.

Update (10/17/2007): To survive and grow in Warbook, hit the smallest kingdom that you are allowed to attack but the strongest hero to increase chances of success and get high exp to level up.

As of December 18, I now focus on attacking heroes with the same land size as I am but lower levels. I think it is useless to be a high rank hero if your land is small.

As of January 2008, I now attack heroes of levels higher than mine but smaller in land size.

Update: (11/8/2007): Warbook just added the Super Search feature and this is now what I use to find heroes that can be attacked. Although I only focus on those whose level is higher than mine. The good thing about it is that leveling up became faster and chances of chain attack gets minimized. Although I had to admit that the game is beginning to be less exciting since I start using it. (As of December 18, this is no longer the case for this feature, I stopped using it).

Another option in attacking is by casting spells such as magic vortex (drain half of opponent's mana), fireball (destroys opponent's army), and earthquake (destroys opponent's infrastructure). This is dependent on how much spell power and mana you have and which you can increase as you level-up in the hero's page. This is an option if you find that an opponent's barrier is not that strong during your survey.

Note that magicians with higher rank can also land grab (get opponent's land and convert to own) using their mana.

Note that warmonger and slayer can use their bloodlust mana to increase their attack score for a period of time.

The necromancer can use its raise dead mana to resurrect its dead army members to zombie.

Note that you can enter into a trade agreement with other heros. This is where you can trade gold in exchange for soldiers or vice versa. As a newbie, I find that sending a trade agreement proposal while being attacked is also like a white flag being waived.

You can also send an aid package to another hero such as soldiers or gold that they can use to rebuild their kingdom.

You can also join alliances to help out or be helped by fellow heroes. When you have enough gold, you can also start your own alliance.

I'm still figuring out how Factions work.

I'm still a newbie in Warbook and hope to update this guide as I learn the game more. For now, my goal is to reach Level 50 in Warbook which is considered the maximum level that you can attain in the game. Don't forget to monitor and join the discussion to get a feel of the community too. Additional tips are more than welcome. Thanks!